Classic Usborne Computer Science Books/Comics as PDFs

I really wish more publishers openly took the approach "we're not monetizing this anymore, here it is for free". It would help combat the damage of our extended copyright terms a lot.

&gt; Scroll down to download free copies of the Usborne 1980s computer books. NB these programs don&#x27;t work on modern computers.<p>This is sad to read when there are ways to make them run on modern computers! You&#x27;d still have to type the listings though (unless someone OCR&#x27;d them all...).

I had a C64 but no software, so I had to make my own by typing out the code from these books by hand. I love them though be warned that the programs are much simpler than the covers would lead one to believe.<p>When I was done, I realized I knew how to code basic. No one had to explain loops or goto or if after you type it in a few times.<p>I will add that OCR is not going to help you because a lot of the code was PEEK and POKE. I suppose your basic interpreter could also emulate the C64 memory space.

These are really well written guides. They are more readable and enjoyable to read than many programming books published for adults today.<p>I&#x27;ve often wondered why programming books don&#x27;t use simple graphics or diagrams to illustrate programming concepts. Anyone writing a technical guide (of any kind) would benefit from reading these as a source of ideas and inspiration.

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Interesting. I&#x27;ve got several friends and family that &quot;sell&quot; Usborne books. I always figured it was just some MLM scam and always just told them no thank you when they tried to give me a catalog or a link to their really-long-url-with-numbers.sales.usborne.com page. But they actually look like a decent company. I&#x27;m kind of embarrassed now.

A great find. I remember having Machine Code for Beginners (IIRC) which I got after learning some BASIC. I think it put me off machine code for several years as it seemed to go on and on about how difficult machine code was. (It is&#x2F;was, but some encouragemet would have helped).

I used to get these books out of the library when I was about 8 years old. Unfortunately the code often wouldn&#x27;t work as I was attempting to use the BASIC interpreter on my IBM XT. I never understood why but those PEEK and POKEs can&#x27;t have helped...